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Paul
Howard Brenton
Probably the best-known title on Howard Brenton’s CV is the television series Spooks, although he has written a large number of plays over 36 years. But in the minds of Christian lobbyists he will clearly forever be the depraved soul behind The Romans in Britain, a serious political drama whose emblematic rape scene landed the makers in court in 1980, sued for obscenity by Mary Whitehouse (which charge the prosecution dropped after its opening speech).
The news that Brenton had written a play about Paul, an ‘irreverent’ and ‘provocative’ one no less, was enough for the Cottesloe Theatre to receive 200 lots of, if not hate mail, then judge mail, before anyone had seen it. It turns out that Paul is (among other things) a study of religious fanaticism.
We start with Paul in prison at the end of his life, struggling against his desire for one last vision of Christ before his execution. Then we’re straight into a long flashback of Paul’s journey to Damascus. (One of the temple guards he takes with him to round up Christians, in a fictional but plausible twist, is Barnabas.) Although Paul apparently suffers from epilepsy, he genuinely encounters Jesus on the road, and becomes a fervent Christian.
Back in the cell, he is joined by Peter, a down-to-earth foil for Paul’s passionate certainty. Their discussions lead to a second flashback, Paul’s visit to the Jerusalem church. Here Mary Magdalen turns out to be Jesus’s widow, exasperated by Christian veneration (‘I don’t want my fucking feet washed any more’); and James is exasperated by Paul’s zealous distorting of Jesus’s Judaism.
But the Jerusalem church seems to have an uncomfortable secret. Has it got the skeleton of all skeletons in its closet? New revelations start to deconstruct the events we have seen, and we find out how the greatest story came to be told. The denouement is good enough not to spoil here.
Not the least impressive aspect of Paul is Brenton’s research. His grasp of the facts of Paul’s life is quite stunning. He is, I believe, ‘a son of the manse’ (a fact that finds echoes when for example the guard forbids Paul to sing: ‘I hate Christian hymns. They make my teeth go funny’), but then a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and in fact Brenton exhibits more understanding of the historical issues than most preachers.
Similarly, his portrait of Paul’s maddening zealotry, however true it may or may not be to Paul (and I think many Christians would see some truth in it), it is certainly true to life - the passion, the imperviousness, the interfaith monologue, the manipulative genius. The play joins the current debate about whether extremists betray the life-affirming roots of their faith, or whether religion is fundamentally fanatical and it is the moderate majority who have transmuted it into something new.
The play’s real challenge to Christians is not in its critical (and often positive) portrait of Paul, but in its explanation of the resurrection of Jesus. It is not giving away too much to say that according to Paul it never happened, so each of the main characters is either deluded or dishonest, in one case both. Hence ‘irreverent’ and ‘provocative’.
But what do we have to complain of here? So long as dramas about Christian origins are written by people who are not Christians, the issue of accounting for the resurrection story will arise. I suppose popular orthodoxy says it should be treated not as a statement of fact to be scrutinised, but as a belief to be accorded reverence and respect. That certainly seems to be the demand of Christian protesters: unless they object to the subject being handled at all, they are objecting to its being handled without reverence.
This attitude seems entirely wrongheaded to me, and it collides headlong with the logic of C S Lewis’s over-quoted multiple-choice ‘Liar, lunatic or Lord’ (in which, given the claims Jesus made for himself ‘great human teacher’ is ‘patronising nonsense’ not even on the question paper). The same reasoning applies at least as well to the apostles over the resurrection. They devoted their lives and deaths to broadcasting their claim to have witnessed it. Either (a) it happened as they said, an option only for Christians; (b) it didn’t, in which case they were liars and to hell with them, or they were insanely deluded. How they can be worthy of unbelieving reverence I fail to see.
Admittedly, a play which plausibly blows the gaff on the foundation of the faith may be uncomfortable watching for Christians. On the other hand, it might also be encouraging to reflect on just how incredible Brenton’s rationalised version of events turns out to be. The number of years involved makes it hugely implausible, and to make it work the play has to roll Paul’s three visits to Jerusalem into one - fine for a dramatisation but fatal for a serious theory.
But whether or not it ultimately works, it’s welcome. Unlike some protesters, the respect I want for my beliefs is not that people should be nice about them even if they’re dangerously wrong, but that they should listen to and engage and argue with them. This is what Brenton has done, and I’m thankful.
the respect I want for my beliefs is not that people should be nice about them even if they’re dangerously wrong, but that they should listen to and engage and argue with them